slanting from it, and is rather more than twenty cubits high, having the shape of a tope.  White and silk-like cloth of hair is wrapped all round it, which is then painted in various colors.  They make figures of devas, with gold, silver, and lapis lazuli grandly blended and having silken streamers and canopies hung out over them.  On the four sides are niches, with a Buddha seated in each, and a Bodhisattva standing in attendance on him.  There may be twenty cars, all grand and imposing, but each one different from the others.  On the day mentioned, the monks and laity within the borders all come together; they have singers and skilful musicians:  they say their devotions with flowers and incense.  The Brahmans come and invite the Buddhas to enter the city.  These do so in order, and remain two nights in it.  All through the night they keep lamps burning, have skilful music, and present offerings.  This is the practice in all the other kingdoms as well.  The Heads of the Vaisya families in them establish in the cities houses for dispensing charity and medicines.  All the poor and destitute in the country, orphans, widowers, and childless men, maimed people and cripples, and all who are diseased, go to those houses, and are provided with every kind of help, and doctors examine their diseases.  They get the food and medicines which their cases require, and are made to feel at ease; and when they are better, they go away of themselves.

When king Asoka destroyed the seven topes, intending to make eighty-four thousand, the first which he made was the great tope, more than three li to the south of this city.  In front of this there is a footprint of Buddha, where a vihara has been built.  The door of it faces the north, and on the south of it there is a stone pillar, fourteen or fifteen cubits in circumference, and more than thirty cubits high, on which there is an inscription, saying, “Asoka gave the Jambudvipa to the general body of all the monks, and then redeemed it from them with money.  This he did three times.”  North from the tope three hundred or four hundred paces, king Asoka built the city of Ne-le.  In it there is a stone pillar, which also is more than thirty feet high, with a lion on the top of it.  On the pillar there is an inscription recording the things which led to the building of Ne-le, with the number of the year, the day, and the month.

[Footnote 1:  The modern Patna.  The Sanscrit name means “The city of flowers.”  It is the Indian Florence.]

CHAPTER XXVIII

Rajagriha, New and Old—­Legends Connected with It

The travellers went on from this to the southeast for nine yojanas, and came to a small solitary rocky hill, at the head or end of which was an apartment of stone, facing the south—­the place where Buddha sat, when Sakra, Ruler of Devas, brought the deva-musician, Panchasikha, to give pleasure to him by playing on his lute.  Sakra then asked Buddha about forty-two subjects, tracing the questions out with his finger one by one on the rock.  The prints of his tracing are still there; and here also there is a monastery.